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take a look at GNUStep Web, the FREE version of WebObjects. It's Objective C but otherwise satisfies most of your criteria.

EOF -- an object relational mapper, providing isolation from the database and from the database model -- in particular is very, very nice. Not the final answer to everything, but still quite cool :-)

The sad thing with Apple's current WebObjects is that it's only java (it's even a J2EE environment), while originally (at NeXT) it was Objective-C based (plus WebScript, an ObjC-like script language). They dropped the Objective-C bit with WebObjects 5, sadly (4.5 had ObjC and Java). Well, ok, beeing a J2EE env has its own advantages, but still...

The documentation of WO 4.5 is here, the documentation for the current WO is here.

There is a free software implementation of WebObjects 4.5 from the GNUstep project, GNUstepWeb, which work well. OpenGroupware.org also has its own WO 4.5 implementation, NGObjWeb, which works very well too (it's the foundation of SOPE). I wrote an article showing how to do simple (html) components, but it's in french ;-)

Though, if you want to discover a really interesting project, have a look to Seaside. It's inspired by WebObjects, with an excellent component model, but is even better (support of continuations, etc). And it's completely dynamic, letting you change things at runtime easily (Smalltalk rulez ;-). It's one of the best thing I know :-)

There is two free implementations of WebObjects -- one done by the GNUstep project, GNUstepWeb, and another that's done by OpenGroupware.org (they use it as their base for SOPE), called NGObjWeb.. both implements WebObjects 4.5 (ie, the version before java) and are used commercially.

Both works quite well, but they lack a scripting language (although the OGo guys works on a WebScript-like language, and the GNUstepWeb guys works on integrating StepTalk).

About EOF, the GNUstep project have an implementation named GDL2 (GNUstep Database 2) which implements EOF 4.5 -- but sadly we are missing an EOModeller (even if somebody is working on one). Here an article from Ludovic Marcotte about GDL2.

And don't forget GNUstepWeb: http://wwww.gnustepweb.org/

Manuel

Gnustepweb is a framework that is supposedly compatible with WebObjects.

The parent post has a really, really good point. GNUStep has oh, so much potential and it's getting close to ready.

Like it or lump it, Apple has produced the most cohesive *nix environment out there. They've got support from the important corporate software vendors. Vendors want to port to Linux, but damn, the myriad gui toolkits and serious lack of complete frameworks is daunting for commercial entities.

I know choice is good, but is Cocoa/Aqua that unexpressive to code in? The proliferation of apps for the Mac would seem to point to the contrary. Why must we reinvent the boring stuff (i.e. toolkits and frameworks) over and over? Couldn't we just adopt a proven successful model, run with it, then tweak where needed?

I just built GNUStep from NetBSD's excellent cross-platform package management/build system, pkgsrc. GNUStep is pretty cool. It's like a slightly primative, somewhat ugly Mac. Other than that, it's very, very similar. It's clear people are starting to write useful apps with it. It's got a finder-like app called GWorkspace. It's got a pretty decent mail application that runs on both MacOS and GNUStep.

-Peter

WebObjects is not free software.

GNUstepWeb, however, is.

And yes, it's a complete clone of WebObjects and Enterprise Object Framework.

The great part is that this technology is so transparent, so clean, that I imagine it should be fairly simple to re-implement as OSS. Perhaps this is what the Tapestry project is trying to do...

(The latter even appears to have been backported to OS X.)

Anyone experienced with them?

You are talking about GNUstep. For many years, the OpenStep API and development tools have been far superior to *anything* else in the Windows or UNIX world. The GNUstep project has already got usable alpha clones of the NeXT development tools that are a joy to work with. Take a look at this mail client developed quickly with GNUstep tools. It runs on GNUstep platforms and Mac OS X.

The GNUstep project is actively tracking the additions made to Cocoa (what Apple decided to call OpenStep after buying NeXT).

GNUstep frameworks and applications will build on most UNIXes, on Mac OS X (obviously), and win32 platforms. Support for the GUI backend is Alpha on win32 but is progressing.

GNUstep has a database framework much like NeXT's Enterprise Object Framework and a web development system much like WebObjects. Also available is a 3D framework, music and sound frameworks, a networking framework, an email framework, and others.

Like Apple, you can write your applications in Objective C or Java. Unlike Apple, the GNUstep project provides several other language options: Ruby, Guile, and other scripting languages by way of StepTalk.

So, why GSWeb or WebObjects?

- It's a framework, not an application server. In other words, you don't build applications, you use the WO framework to build application servers. Each app handles it's own memory, threading, resources, etc for incredible performance and scalability. This also makes it extremely flexible as it's a strong OO environment and almost all of the functionality of the app server can be overriden in you application.

- EOF (Entreprise Object Framework). If you've never used EOF (or GNUstep DB) you don't know what database development could be like.

- It's a standard environment. By this I mean the programming is more like a standard GUI app. You don't have a form that posts data to the same page or another page. Instead, you have a form with an action property that is bound to a method so that when an action is performed (click submit) the method is called. You as a developer don't have to worry about form names and how to do validation, your method can do whatever it needs and return an arbitrary page without messiness like forwarding or including other pages.

There's lots more. Basically, when logic very much outweighs content, WO is hard to beat. On the downside, it is a completely different way to think about web development and there is a learning curve. For OpenStep developers, this will be small, but for programming novices, it could be quite steep. But how productive you can be with a tool is definately a factor that needs to be considered.

Check out GNUstep Web at www.gnustepweb.org. I have the source for a very simple GSWeb application up at http://zeus1.tzo.com/GuestBook/, this is basically a GSWeb conversion of apple's first WebObjects tutorial app (yes, it's entirely useless and it would be stupid to use WO for a GuestBook :)